Deeplinks

An article in the Guardian yesterday reported that the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI is using sophisticated technology from the U.S. as part of a campaign of kidnapping, torture, and even murder. At first, the target appeared to be radical Islamic groups (which is ironic, because the ISI was a key player in the ascendency of the Taliban in the first place), but soon enough the victims included people who were completely innocent, or guilty only of political opposition to the Pakistani regime. In the middle of this report is a description of how these agencies are using a lot of surveillance technologies that were given to them by the United States, in aid of this campaign:

A few weeks back, we wrote about how domain name registrar GoDaddy took offline Seclists.org based merely on an informal request and without providing any meaningful notice to the site's operator. Unfortunately, this isn't the only instance in which GoDaddy has carelessly ignored its users' rights.

In February, EFF was contacted by an anonymous owner of a parody and criticism website forum that allegedly exposes the financial corruption and domestic scandal of a local politician in Birmingham, Alabama. As part of a civil case in family court, an attorney representing the politician's girlfriend issued a subpoena to GoDaddy seeking the identity of the website owner, who was not a party to the lawsuit.

Line Noise, EFF's occasional podcast, is back with a new edition for Sunshine Week. David Sobel, EFF Senior Attorney and director of our FLAG project, talks about uncovering the secrets behind National Security Letters, government datamining, and exactly how big the FBI's file on the CIA is.

The House of Representatives has passed a bill that will make much-needed updates to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and strengthen the public's right to get records from the federal government. H.R. 1309, the Freedom of Information Act Amendments of 2007, was approved yesterday by a considerable 308-117 margin. But the White House lashed out against the legislation, calling FOIA improvements "premature and counterproductive" in light of an 2005 presidential order requiring agencies to streamline their FOIA processes.

Not content with wasting universities' resources via their usual tactics--i.e., flooding them with machine-generated complaints about file sharing--the major record labels are now demanding that universities help them shake down students.

The RIAA has asked universities and colleges to forward "pre-lawsuit" letters to alleged filesharers that promise a "discounted" settlement price if the student agrees to pay up immediately. Forwarding the letters saves the RIAA the trouble and expense of filing a lawsuit to obtain students' contact information--a savings that may be redirected to more lawsuits.

Last week, the Department of Justice Inspector General's office released a damning report documenting the FBI abusing its powers under the PATRIOT Act and violating the law to collect Americans' telephone, Internet, financial, credit, and other personal records about Americans without judicial approval.

It appears that not everyone at the DOJ got the memo. The DOJ's Life and Liberty website, a site dedicated to defending the honor of the PATRIOT Act during the re-authorization process last spring, still reads as if nothing has changed. Particularly in the light of the newly revealed truth, many of the quotes now seem (at best) naive.

After years of criticism from EFF and other privacy advocates, Google announcedyesterdayanew policy on how it handles logs of its users' searches: after 18-24 months, it will delete key information in its server logs that could be used to link particular users to records of their search queries.

Online music radio stations may soon be in deep trouble due to a ruling by the Copyright Royalty Board. The ruling [PDF] means that the rates that most webcasters pay to license sound recordings will more than double over the next several years.

Most nonsubscription, noninteractive webcasters pay a royalty rate set by the government in order to license sound recordings (typically from record labels). This statutory license was setup by Congress in 1995 to ensure that online radio would not be left to the impossible task of clearing every song one at a time with each rights holder (traditional terrestrial radio broadcasters pay nothing for using sound recordings, but pay songwriters through three collecting societies: ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC).